Meditation as An Effective Intervention for PTSD

Meditation training may be useful for relieving posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including depression and anxiety symptoms. Researchers at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology studied the effects of meditation among mental health workers in New Orleans 10 weeks after Hurricane Katrina (Waelde et al., 2008).

In the study, a total of 20 African American and Caucasian mental health workers were involved in a 4-hour workshop followed by an eight-week home study program (Waelde et al., 2008). The investigators found that participants’ PTSD and anxiety symptoms significantly reduced over the 8 weeks of the intervention.

In addition, these changes may be related to the length or the number of minutes of the daily meditation training (Waelde et al., 2008). Most of participants had overall improvements in well-being. These findings indicate that meditation may be a practical and effective intervention for PTSD.